The comparative effects of consciousness raising tasks and dynamic assessment on morphological awareness: the case of pre-intermediate EFL learners

Abstract

Finding out which teaching strategies best support students learning is a key objective of educational research. Knowing this, this study investigated the comparative effects of consciousness-raising (CR) tasks and dynamic assessment (DA) on morphological awareness in an Afghani EFL context. To achieve this, 90 EFL grade 11 learners from three intact classes were selected through a convenience sampling procedure and were assigned to DA, CR, and control groups, respectively, with the same number of participants in each condition. A nonrandomized pretest–posttest design was carried out. The results of the Oxford quick placement test revealed that the participants had pre-intermediate English proficiency. To assess learners’ morphological awareness, two different tests of morphological awareness were given both prior to the treatment and right after it. The DA group received interactionist DA on the target morphemes, the CR group received CR instruction on the target form, and the control group received nothing. The results of a one-way between-groups ANOVA revealed that both DA and CR groups significantly outperformed the control group on the post-test. A further post hoc analysis using Bonferroni adjustment demonstrated that the difference between DA and CR groups was also statistically significant with a small effect size (eta squared = 0.042), substantiating the superiority of DA over CR tasks on morphological awareness. The theoretical and pedagogical implications of the study are discussed.